Michael Ignatieff says his Liberal Party can beat Stephen Harper by riding the same wave of voter disgust that propelled Rob Ford into the Toronto mayor’s chair.

Ford, a small-c conservative who campaigned as an outsider, fought off candidates from the political establishment in Toronto and Ontario to win Toronto’s municipal election handily.

and:

“The same people that voted for Rob Ford voted for me and they’re not crazy,” said Ignatieff, who has won two elections in the riding of Etobicoke in Toronto’s southwest corner. “I feel Rob Ford is capitalizing on something that I saw all summer and all autumn, which is a middle class that feels the elastic is wound very, very tight.”

So Ignatieff thinks that he can pass himself off as an ‘outsider’ to the voting public and divorce himself from all of the past Liberal history and current ineptitude?

This is not to say that come an election that he won’t be returned to Ottawa by his riding’s voters; it is a safe Liberal riding. But I doubt it will be because he is seen as the outsider, untouched by the politics of the past, or the saviour who will magically make everything right.